"Big Music" from the 80s. I was on the fence for a long time with these guys, but they've really grown on me. This is a great album, but some people may have trouble with the big sound and occasional 80s production touches. It's worth the effort though, as the songwriting is top notch. One of my favorite aspects of this LP is the barely beneath the surface aggression on certain tracks. I'd recommend this album to anyone that likes the more mainstream-ish strains of post-punk 80s guitar pop/rock. Be sure to check out the "Fisherman's Blues" LP as well. My copy is a standard U.S. pressing. If you can find a U.K. pressing, you might want to go for that, but any copy in excellent shape can probably be picked up fairly cheaply.

Field recordings made in Burundi during the 1960s. Performed mainly on traditional home made instruments, the songs here cover a variety of subjects. Some are traditional folk songs, some are in praise of the local Catholic clergy, and one is an improvised love song.

Stuff like this fascinates me. I never would have heard any of this if not for being a record collector. I mean seriously, Spotify ain't gonna suggest this. Given the area of the world these recordings come from, and the massive genocides that have taken place there, it is likely that the many of the tribal and ethnic cultures represented here are either very much marginalized or extinct. This isnt a political comment in an way at all, either, just a statement of fact. I'm glad that someone took the time to document these sounds before they were gone forever.

In the clip below, we hear an older man from Gahabura singing and playing an instrument know as an inanga which is similar to an eight-stringed zither (this was considered to be the national instrument of Burundi). The singer is dreaming of returning to the happier places he knew in his youth.According to the liner notes of the album, these songs were traditionally performed at night, and the musicians being recorded were highly offended at being asked to perform them in the daytime.

^Very cool Gordon. I wish I had more African LPs in my collection. Kinda hard to come by in any of the places I've lived in. And yeah, part of the fun about record shopping is buying things on a whim or discovering things you knew nothing about. When I see people just buying records they think they have to have because everyone else has them, or only their favorite "safe" albums they've listened to over and over, I think they are cheating themselves.

Picked this up with some other classical LPs on the cheap. There are some ticks and pops on this one, but the recording is very nice, even though I believe it is some kind of fake stereo. Sounding better after two go-rounds on the RCM.